[imagesource: 123RF/Vladislavs Gorniks]

When I buy a lottery ticket, I usually spend a few minutes contemplating what I would do with my newfound riches.

Of late, when daydreaming, I find myself thinking about the first morning of alert level 3, and how I would go about ensuring that I buy enough booze to see me through a good few weeks.

I’m not alone on that front, and I’m already shuddering at the thought of the queues outside liquor stores, and the mad rush to load as much booze into the trolley before the shelves are stripped bare.

Like the old KTV show Reggie’s Rush, but for adults.

As things stand, according to the government notice for alert level 3 liquor regulations, liquor sales may take place only on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday between 8AM and noon, “subject to an industry plan on social distance (sic) and quantitative restrictions”.

Take a moment to picture that chaos, before we carry on with Business Day reporting below:

Restricting trade to 12 hours a week is bound to lead to long queues outside off-licences. Even if the retailers make arrangements to limit the number of customers inside a shop at any given time, the bottleneck at the door, particularly near closing time, will deliver the perfect environment for the transmission of the disease.

In my experience, people doing their shopping have been pretty kind to one another during lockdown, but when you’re grappling over the last case of beer all niceties go out the window.

I’m willing to try a few non-alcoholic drinks that taste like the real thing, but my patience only extends so far.

The Liquor Traders Association of SA has now submitted a plan to the government, outlining protocols and plans that they believe would work better, and be safer, when we reach alert level 3:

They will make arrangements to ensure high-risk customers can identify themselves and be managed accordingly, and have proposed erecting protective barrier screens at all public interface points.

They have also suggested trading hours of 9am-6pm on Mondays to Fridays and 9am-4pm on Saturdays. They have also proposed restrictions on the volumes supplied to mitigate against the risk of resale, but also to minimise frequency of travel to liquor outlets to prevent panic buying.

To manage the initial surge in demand in the first week, they have suggested using the surnames of purchasers as a means of limiting the days and times of purchase: surnames beginning with A-M will be able to buy on Monday and Wednesday, and those beginning with N-Z on Tuesday and Thursday.

Wow.

Facebook is already a mess with people asking whether they can walk on the beach again, or go for a haircut (it’s still a no on both, come now), but throw in folks having to use their last names when figuring out when they can buy booze and I foresee a hot mess.

However it happens, those limited trading times of 12 hours per week need to be reworked, and the association’s spokesperson, Sean Robinson, is genuinely worried:

 “The proposed level 3 trading hours sets liquor retail up for failure, with queues, bottlenecks, crowding, rioting, violence and looting an inevitable result.

“ We are happy to work closely with the authorities to limit the spread of Covid-19 in our stores, but we really need to be serving our customers again,” he said.

I’ll raise my glass to that.

In his address last night, President Ramaphosa stated that most of the country will drop to alert level 3 at the end of May, so there is still time to iron out the details of how alcohol will be sold.

Issues such as sorting out food parcel deliveries, and SASSA grants, to our most vulnerable citizens must take priority, but a rethink of certain alert level 3 regulations is clearly needed, too.

[source:businessday]